On Longing for Home

The first flush of excitement that novelty brings is something I’ll always treasure to go back to, because excitement often vaporizes to make room for an inexplicable sense of gloom. Inexplicable because I can’t reason it away with lofty thoughts and pragmatic arguments; Inexplicable gloom because hiding under the wings that seek after the freshness of that ever elusive horizon are the roots that try hard to find the certitude of home. The analogy of the fully grown plant uprooted to be planted elsewhere seems fitting. The plant droops and its downcast countenance portends ominously that perhaps it is going to wither and perish. It is as if the plant is seeking for the sureness of home. The soil that birthed it, that tended and fostered it.

There is in everyone a longing for home, and that longing is intensified by the deprivation of that sense of belonging. Every little detail is a painful reminder; the glorious evening sky, the smell of rain, the nippy night wind. It all feels like home yet so different…there is something that is amiss. Home could be a place like “Claremont,” India or home could be the comfort of a well rehearsed routine. At a point when everything seems as inconstant as the shifting desert sand, it is almost imperative to summon to memory what my friend told me, “You are not home till you are home.”

We need to be nostalgic about the past, it is that sense of melancholic nostalgia that separates us from being mere brutes or must I say automatons. However an excess of it can be so unbearable that our vision for the future becomes foggy. It is vital to wake up and live each day, it is alright if that day is a fine blend of bitter-sweetness because soon there ought to be a day that is more sweet than bitter. There should be in each of us a Ulysses-like desire to “drink life to the lees” (Tennyson, Poems). Even if made weak by circumstances, we need to look within us to find that strength of character “To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield."

While that might be fitting motivation to spur us on as we sojourn here below, it is important that we don’t become too comfortable here because this is not home. Home is where the heart is and we need to fix our heart and in fact every faculty on this - our heavenly home, where there are no more tears, no more sadness, yes and no more uprooting. We all need to have a longing and homesickness, if you like, for that Home. Finally, the essence of my friend's words dawns on me, “You’re not home till you are Home.”